IOSR Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering (IOSR-JECE)

e-ISSN: 2278-2834,p- ISSN: 2278-8735.Volume 9, Issue 6, Ver. I (Nov - Dec. 2014), PP 04-08
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Wireless power meter monitoring with power theft detection and

intimation system using GSM and Zigbee networks
G. L. Prashanthi1, K. V. Prasad2
1
M.Tech, Embedded systems, VR siddhatrha institute of technology, Vijayawada, Krishna AP, India
2
Assistant professor, embedded systems, M.Tech, VR siddhatrha institute of technology, Krishna, AP, India

Abstract: With the electric industry undergoing change, increased attention is being focused on power supply
reliability and power quality. Power providers and users alike are concerned about reliable power, whether the
focus is on interruptions and disturbances or extended outages. Monitoring can provide information about
power flow and demand and help to identify the cause of power system disturbances. The proposal in this paper
is to monitor the power consumed by a model organization such a household consumers from a centrally
located point. Monitoring the power means calculating the power consumed exactly by the user at a given time.
The power consumed by the user is measured and communicated to the controlling substation whenever needed
by the person at the substation. The feedback from the user helps in identifying usages between authorized and
unauthorized users which helps in controlling the power theft, one of the major challenges in current scenarios.
Communication between user/household and substation can be of wired and wireless
Keywords: Zig Bee, power theft, GSM, AT commands, wireless meter reading.

I. Introduction
Power theft is the biggest problem in recent days which causes lot of loss to electricity boards. In
countries like India, these situations are more often, if we can prevent these thefts we can save lot of power.
Electrical power theft detection system is used to detect an unauthorized tapping on distribution lines.
Implementation part of this system is a distribution network of electrical power supply system. Existing system
is not able to identify the exact location of tapping. This proposed system actually finds out on which electrical
line there is a tapping. This is a real time system. Wireless data transmission and receiving technique is used.
This will provide an additional facility of wireless meter reading with the same technique and in same cost. This
will protect distribution network from power theft done by tapping, meter tampering etc.
There are two types of techniques to deliver the information to the authorized agency to control the
theft of the electricity via bypassing the energy meter, those are wired and wireless. Wired networks require lot
of setup and maintenance cost. In wireless technologies there are many technologies. In this project we
implemented using Zigbee technology because of its effective communication, self-healing networks, low
power consumption, zero traffic and they can handle over 60000 devices and more over Zigbee communication
installation require no special permissions in most of the places. It uses unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band which is
available worldwide. ZIGBEE has range between 10 m to 2 km and it works well with networks such as Wi-Fi,
Ethernet and GPRS and also provides scalable networking solution which makes it suitable to be used in
controlling and monitoring application. And we selected other communication network to be GSM to send SMS
to authorities in case of theft, because GSM has a built in transport layer encryption, which is supported by most
network providers. GPRS offers a number of security enhancements over existing GSM security. The standards
themselves also offer technical features, which a network operator may choose to use. Aside of that, a different
form of security might be desired in addition to the provided transport layer security.

II. Block Diagram

The developed prototype consists of a transmitter tapped to meter of the consumer and a receiver at a
junction place. Their respective block diagrams are as follows

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Fig: Transmitter Block diagram

It consists of Load, current transformer, voltage transformer, PIC micro controller, and a differential
relay. The household load supplied is connected in series to the AC supply mains through a switch which is
operated by the action of a relay. Current transformer is used to measure the current required for the user and the
voltage transformer is used to measure the voltage of operation for the user. The measured values are given to
the PIC micro controller which has inbuilt ADC with RISC architecture to convert the analog values to the
digital values. These values are stored in microcontroller registers and the information is transmitted to the
receiver, whenever there is a request for the data from the remote controlling station. Oscillator is provided to
the microcontroller for the clock signal and the reference voltage is given for the each of the IC used.

Fig: receiver block diagram

The receiver part of this prototype consists of an ARM micro controller, Zigbee receiver LCD display
and alarm to pop out theft case, and also an external GSM modem to inform theft case to authorities via SMS.

III. Automatic Meter Reading (Amr)

Now a day utility company personnel goes at every house to take the readings of meters for billing
purpose. It will create problem when consumer is out of Town or home is locked due to other reasons. This
system of wireless meter reading is based on the same principle of wireless data transmission that is used in
power theft detection Utility company personnel will have a device consists of wireless data receiver with
microcontroller and display

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Fig: Architecture of AMR

The Base station unit will be consists of a zigbee module attached with a Transceiver micro-strip
antenna, microcontroller attached to digital meter. The frequency of communication will be in 900 MHZ. the
data will transmitted to the central station at regular intervals. The end station consists of an ARM micro
controller receiving data from different PIC micro controllers through Zigbee receiver. The data thus received is
processed and calculated the exact amount of power consumed by specific customer

IV. Power Measurement And Theft Detection

Aim of the Remote power monitoring is to measure the exact amount of power that is consumed by the
user at a given instant of time so the power measurement unit is essential and is connected on the consumer side.
The power is measured by using the instrument transformers. Instrument transformers are used for measurement
and protective application, together with equipment such as meters and relays. Their role in electrical systems is
of primary importance as they are a means of "stepping down" the current or voltage of a system to measurable
values, such as 5A or 1A in the case of a current transformers or 110V or 100V in the case of a voltage
transformer. This offers the advantage that measurement and protective equipment can be standardized on a few
values of current and voltage. The types of instrument transformers available are
• Voltage transformers
• Current transformers.

A. Voltage transformers
The voltage transformer is one in which "the secondary voltage is substantially proportional to the
primary voltage and differs in phase from it by an angle which is approximately zero for an appropriate
direction of the connections." In an "ideal" transformer, the secondary voltage vector is exactly opposite and
equal to the primary voltage vector, when multiplied by the turn’s ratio. In a "practical" transformer, errors are
introduced because some current is drawn for the magnetization of the core and because of drops in the primary
and secondary windings due to leakage reactance and winding resistance. One can thus talk of a voltage error,
which is the amount by which the voltage is less than the applied primary voltage, and the phase error, which is
the phase angle by which the reversed secondary voltage vector is displaced from the primary voltage vector.

B. Current transformers
A current transformer is defined as "as an instrument transformer in which the secondary current is
substantially proportional to the primary current (under normal conditions of operation) and differs in phase
from it by an angle which is approximately zero for an appropriate direction of the connections." This highlights
the accuracy requirement of the current transformer but also important is the isolating function, which means no
matter what the system voltage the secondary circuit need be insulated only for a low voltage.
The current transformer works on the principle of variable flux. In the "ideal" current transformer,
secondary current would be exactly equal (when multiplied by the turn’s ratio) and opposite of the primary
current. But, as in the voltage transformer, some of the primary current or the primary ampere-turns are utilized
for magnetizing the core, thus leaving less than the actual primary ampere turns to be "transformed" into the
secondary ampere-turns. This naturally introduces an error in the transformation. The error is classified into
two-the current or ratio error and the phase error.
Thus by considering all these parameters we program micro controllers to calculate the amount of
power actually consumed.

C. Theft detection method

The simple formula behind theft detection is whenever input power is passing from supplier to the
receiver, at that time if the total amount of power is not received by the receiver then there is possibility of theft

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 Wireless power meter monitoring with power theft detection and intimation system using GSM and

of energy.

ΣPsent = ΣPconsumed + Loss ……..No Theft ΣPsent ≠ ΣPconsumed + Loss ……..Theft Occur
Here,
Psent = Power measured by pole side energy meter Pconsumed = Power measured by load side
energy meter

Consider a distribution system shown in conceptual diagram. Two single phase loads L1 and L2 are
supplied from two different phases. M1 and M2 are the energy meters that measure power consumed by these
loads over a period. Pole based system (P) have been installed to detect power theft.

FIG2.3.1: Conceptual diagram

L1, L2 Single phase loads M1, M2 Digital energy
meters

P Pole based system (installed on a distribution pole) There are three different types of systems to monitor
power sent

A. pole based system

It consists of Wireless data receiver, Micro-controller, Digital energy meter. Digital energy meter will
measure power sent over each line for a certain time period.

B. Pole Side Energy Meter

One energy meter is installed in a pole based system. This meter is capable to measure a power sent
over each line connected to that pole.

C. Load Side Energy Meter (M1, M2):

Meter is installed on load side to measure a power consumed by load over a time. Also it has an
additional feature of transmitting that data to receiver using wireless technique ZigBee network.

Fig: load side meter

D. Power theft detection

Suppose there is tapping done by any unauthorized person on the line to connect his appliance. Over a
certain period there will be difference between meter reading and pole based reading.
Microcontroller will compare these two values and if the measured value on pole is more than value
send by meter by some tolerance then power theft is happening on line. This theft signal generated on pole
system can be transmitted to substation by power line communication technique, Tolerance should be provided
for losses of line. Because over a long period there will be difference in reading of meter on load side and pole
side due to loss of line between pole and load. Therefore tolerance should be provided through programming of
micro-controller.

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V. Working
The setup is build such that every consumer is provided with an automated meter reader with inbuilt
microcontroller to monitor the data consumed at regular intervals, the PIC microcontroller is employed at
consumers end and Arm microcontroller is employed on pole station. PIC sends data continuously and ARM
processes data, it already has the record of amount of power sent to each line and it compares this to received
feedback, if the difference between these two values exceeds the prescribed limits then the ARM
microcontroller understands that power theft was happened and raises an alarm, also sends this information to
local authorities via GSM modem
There is a prescribed limit because, we have to keep track of all general power losses other than theft
and PIC was employed at consumers end, while ARM at pole station. This is because both has inbuilt ADC and
RISC architecture but PIC is 8-bit and cheaper it serves the purpose perfectly, while on pole station ARM
receives data from various PIC’s and need higher RAM and architecture to process data quickly, so ARM with
32-bit architecture is employed.

VI. Conclusion
The progress in technology about electrical distribution network is a non-stop process. New things
and new technology are being invented. The proposed system found to be little bit complex as far as
distribution network is concerned, but it’s an automated system of theft detection. It saves time as well as help
to maximize profit margin for utility company working in electrical distribution network. Utility company can
keep a constant eye on its costumer. And the extension of this project with GSM modules helps company to
monitor the amount of usage by the specified customer and generate bill periodically and send it to customer via
SMS, thus saving lot of labor work, time and cost of reading.

References
Journal Papers
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Industrial Info and Control Systems, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden 2006.
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International Conference on Control Applications (CCA 2007), Oct, 2007, pp. 1103 – 1107.
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Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden 2006.

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